Suzanne Vega uses storytelling skills to explore new worlds
When a father she had never known sent dozens of family photographs to her, it opened up a stunning new world for Suzanne Vega. Similarly, meeting a producer with a taste for the bizarre took Vega's music in directions she had never thought possible.
Both experiences shape the songs and sounds of 99.9 F, an album that shows Vega's music going far beyond the New York City folk scene that nurtured her in the early 1980s.
"It described the stance of the album, which is slightly feverish and enough to make you hear and see things in a different way," Vega said of the title. "It's not wild and crazy, exactly. It's just slightly off the norm."
Vega and producer Mitchell Froom created an intriguing sound that mixes folk, rock 'n' roll and some industrial music sounds popular in dance clubs. The music challenges, but doesn't alienate, the traditional folk audience that helped Vega build her career. She's a storyteller, and her own life gives her plenty of stories to tell.
About five years ago, Vega met her father for the first time. During the get-acquainted stage, her dad sent photos. Vega was surprised to discover she had a grandmother who was a drummer in an all-woman vaudeville band during the 1930s. The woman met a trumpet player on the road, and they had four children, but split up and put the children up for adoption.
"I had no idea of any of this," the 32-year-old Vega said. "It has been a lot to reckon with in the last few years... I thought I was being very independent in choosing this lifestyle for myself, only to find out 15 years later that my grandmother had done the same thing."
She sings about her grandmother's experiences on the new album's "Fat Man and Dancing Girl." Another family song, "Blood Sings," is about seeing herself in someone else. Many of the pictures sent to Vega were of a late uncle who "looked a lot like I had imagined my father would look."
Like any skilled songwriter, Vega has the ability to let her imagination run wild and the instincts to know how much to reveal in her music.
One of her most melodic new songs, "In Liverpool," resulted from a lost nap on a Sunday afternoon in that city. "Bells were ringing in the cathedral across the street from the hotel, so I started to think about who was ringing the bells, because they were ringing for about an hour," she said.
"Then I started to think about this old boyfriend I had who was from Liverpool, and I was feeling sort of nostalgic for that time and sort of homesick. I started to think about the hunchback from Notre Dame and ... the idea of lost love or unrequited love." You get the idea. One's mind wanders on a Sunday afternoon.
The woman - whose 1987 hit song about child abuse, "Luka," began a wave of introspective singer-songwriters - again sings about a form of abuse on her new album. "Bad Wisdom" is purposely unspecific. It's a song about a young girl with a dark secret, but the verse that reveals the secret was left off the album.
"I took out the verse that explained very specifically what the problem was, because I felt it was too heavy-handed and I just didn't like it," she said. "But it's been fascinating to hear what everyone thinks the problem is, like incest or abuse. I think everyone has their own form of bad wisdom."
True to its subject matter, "Bad Wisdom" sounds like a stately folk song. But much of 99.9 F sounds like it was programmed by a mad professor.
When Vega recorded a demo tape of the material that would make up the new album, she sent it to three producers. One said he really liked the tape and didn't think much could be done to improve on it. Another suggested Vega make a rap album.
The third producer, Froom, said he liked the songs but not the production. He said it could be more interesting. That appealed to Vega, who was looking to break free from a stale recording environment.
"There was a feeling that everything had to be clean, smooth and pristine, that everything had to be technically correct, that I had to sing on time and in tune, and if there were any strange noises around, we had to get rid of them," she said.
Vega wanted no more of that. So when Froom suggested, for example, that an anvil sound replace drums on "Blood Makes Noise," she laughed and said go ahead.
The co-conspirators weren't trying new things just for the sake of being different. The aproaches had a purpose. Since Vega, by her own admission, has a "small voice," Froom tried to stay away from a traditional rock 'n' roll drum kit to avoid competing with the vocals.
"We tried not to have any restrictions on ourselves," she said. "We didn't say, 'We can't use this anvil sound because our fans wouldn't like it.' There wasn't any question of that. The main thing was to push all boundaries as far as possible."
Submitted by Rob Walters
VegaNet@aol.com
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